HECKER, Ill. — The first fingernail tattoo started off as a joke. The client, a man who had lost part of two fingers in a construction accident, wandered into Eternal Ink Tattoo Studio and asked for a fingernail design at the tips of his fingers. It was his way of making light of a bad…
In nearly 20 years with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Rear Adm. Nancy Knight, director of the agency’s global health protection division, has led the development, coordination and implementation of public health policies and programs in countries including Nigeria, Kenya and South Africa. Before joining the C.D.C., Dr. Knight was a Peace Corps…
I’ve long thought the human body was not meant to run on empty, that fasting was done primarily for religious reasons or political protest. Otherwise we needed a reliably renewed source of fuel to function optimally, mentally and emotionally as well as physically. Personal experience reinforced that concept; I’m not pleasant to be around when…
Imagine if American health policy were established by the consensus of health economists. What would the system look like? A survey of nearly 200 Ph.D. health economists working in the United States provides some clues. The survey, presented at the American Society of Health Economists conference in Washington last summer, was conducted by the health…
TOKYO — American passengers evacuated a cruise ship that had been quarantined for more than a week in the Japanese port city of Yokohama, after hundreds of people on board fell ill with the coronavirus. The Americans boarded two chartered flights to the United States, and the flights departed Tokyo at 7:05 a.m. Monday, according…
The cruise ship had been shunned at port after port for fear it might carry the coronavirus, but when the Westerdam arrived in Cambodia on Thursday, the prime minister greeted its passengers with flowers. Amid assurances that the ship was disease free, hundreds of elated passengers disembarked. Some went sightseeing, visiting beaches and restaurants and…
People who rely on social media for information were more likely to be misinformed about vaccines than those who rely on traditional media, according to a study of vaccine knowledge and media use by researchers at the Annenberg Public Policy Center of the University of Pennsylvania. The study, based on nationally representative surveys of nearly…
In experiments with human cells and mice, researchers at the Johns Hopkins Kimmel Cancer Center report evidence that combining the experimental cancer medication TAK228 (also called sapanisertib) with an existing anti-cancer drug called trametinib may be more effective than either drug alone in decreasing the growth of pediatric low-grade gliomas. These cancers are the most…
Researchers have developed a simple blood test that measures the body’s own immune response to improve diagnosis of ovarian cancer. Ovarian cancer is one of the most common gynaecologic cancers, with the highest mortality rate. About 300,000 new cases are diagnosed globally each year, with an estimated 60% of women dying within five years after…
Over half of our genomes are made of repeating elements within DNA. In rare cases, these repeats can become unstable and grow in size. These repeat “expansions” cause neurodegenerative diseases such as ALS and dementia as well as learning disorders and autism in Fragile X syndrome. Research to date has focused on how these expanded…